“Why?”
“I said I wasn’t crying.”
“And I don’t believe you. Dammit, open this door, Kathleen.”
“I don’t want to see you.”
“Because I sent you a few art supplies?” he asked skeptically.
“That’s one reason.”
“And the others? I assume there’s a whole list.”
“Yes,” she said, then added more spiritedly, “And it’s getting longer by the minute.”
“I annoy you,” he guessed.
“Yep.”
“And I ripped the scab off an old wound.”
She sighed at that. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Sweetheart, please let me in. I want to see your face when I’m talking to you.”
“I should let you,” she muttered.
Ben laughed. “All puffy and red, is it?”
“Pretty much.”
“You’ll still be beautiful.”
“It’s too late for sweet-talk, Ben. I’m mad at you.”
“I got that. I want you to tell me why.”
“You said it yourself.”
“But I want you to say it. I want you to scream and shout till you get all the insecurities that man filled your head with out of your system.”
“It’s not that simple,” she said impatiently. “Tim said a lot of cruel, hurtful things to me while we were together, that’s true. But what he said about my art wasn’t one of them.”
“Are you so sure?”
“Yes, dammit. Do you think I would have quit painting just because of what he said?”
“I don’t know. Did you?”
“No. I quit because what I painted could never measure up to what I saw in my head,” she said.
Ben could hear the misery in her voice and saw his mistake then. He’d assumed they were just alike, both being modest about their talents. He’d supposed that she was good but had been told otherwise, not that she had such a low opinion of her own work.
“Maybe—” he began, but she cut him off.
“There are no maybes,” she said flatly. “Not about this.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry I upset you. I thought I was helping.”
“I know you did.”
“Can I come in now?” he asked again, wanting to hold her, to offer some sort of comfort.
“I suppose you’re not going to go away until you’ve patted me on the head,” she said, sounding resigned.
“I was thinking of something a bit more demonstrative,” he said, fighting the urge to chuckle. “A hug, maybe.”
“I don’t need a hug. I need you to drop this.”
“Consider it dropped,” he said at once. “I’ll haul all that stuff right back out of here tonight and toss it in the nearest Dumpster, if it’ll make you feel better.”
A key rattled in the lock at last and the door swung open. She met his gaze. “It was a nice gesture, Ben, even if it was misguided.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his heart twisting at the misery in her eyes. She’d been telling the truth. Her face showed evidence of a long crying jag, but he’d been right, too. She was still beautiful.
She forced a smile. “Maybe we should get out of here,” she said before he could set foot inside. “Give me a second to turn off lights and I’ll lock up.”
Something in her voice alerted him that there was a reason she didn’t want him coming in, which, of course, guaranteed that he followed her to the back.
There on an easel sat an unfinished painting...of him. He must have made a whisper of sound because she whirled around and her gaze flew to clash with his.
“I told you to wait,” she said accusingly.
“I know.”
“I didn’t want you to see it.”
“Because it was meant to be a surprise?”
“No, because it’s awful.”
He stared at her in shock. “Awful? How can you say such a thing? Kathleen, it’s wonderful. You’ve got every detail just right.”
“No, I don’t,” she insisted adamantly. “Maybe if I’d had a photo I could have gotten it right. This is awful. It looks nothing like you.”
As if to prove her point, she picked up the brush with which she’d been working and started to take an angry swipe at the canvas. Ben caught her arm before she could do any damage.
“Don’t you dare ruin it,” he said heatedly.
“It’s no good,” she said again.
He held her, looking down into her tormented eyes. “I can see that you don’t believe me,” he told her quietly. “But let’s get another opinion, one you will trust.”
She searched his face as if desperately wanting to believe he wasn’t lying to her, but not quite daring to hope. “Whose?”
“Destiny’s,” he suggested. “You trusted her to be unbiased about my work.”
“Not at first,” she said.
“But enough to believe her when she said those old wall panels were decent,” he reminded her.
She sighed and he could feel her muscles relaxing.
“Okay,” she said eventually. “But only when it’s finished. Will you let me take a picture or two?”
He could understand why she wanted it to be the best it could possibly be, but he wasn’t sure that waiting was wise. She could suffer another one of these attacks of inadequacy and ruin it.
“Will you promise me that you won’t damage it?”
“Yes,” she said, meeting his gaze evenly. “I promise.”
“No matter how discouraged you get?”
“Yes,” she repeated, this time with a trace of impatience.
“Okay, then. I’ll bring you some snapshots of me. You have till Christmas. In fact, if you want to make Destiny extraordinarily happy, you could give it to her as a gift. I never would sit still for her to paint me.”
But Kathleen was already shaking her head. “No, if it turns out that it’s any good at all, I want to keep it.”
“To prove that you are an artist, after all?” he asked.
“No,” she said, her expression solemn. “Because it’s of the man who cared enough to give me back my love of painting.”
10
Standing in her office with paints scattered around, her own painting on an easel for the first time in years and Ben’s assurances still ringing in her ears, Kathleen felt her heart fill with joy and something else she refused to identify because it felt too much like love.
She didn’t want to love this man, didn’t want to be swayed by tubes of oil paints
